The Passion of Nora Wall - 1999

In February 1996 RTE broadcast Louis Lentin's TV documentary "Dear Daughter", concerning allegations of physical and sexual anuse in Goldenbridge residential school which had been run by the Sisters of Mercy. Within a year of the broadcast - and an apology by the Sisters of Mercy - Ireland experienced a series of fake child abuse scandals. In the course of the year the following were accused:

Nora Wall (formerly Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy) (born 1948) is a former Irishnun of the Sisters of Mercy who was wrongfully convicted of rape in June 1999, and served four days of a life sentence in July 1999, before her conviction was quashed. She was officially declared the victim of a miscarriage of justice in December 2005. The wrongful conviction was based on false allegations by two women in their 20s, Regina Walsh (born 8 January 1978) and Patricia Phelan (born 1973). Walsh had a psychiatric history and Phelan had a history of making false allegations of rape prior to the event. Phelan subsequently admitted to having lied.[1]

Wall was the first woman in the history of the Irish State to be convicted of rape, the first person to receive a life sentence for rapeand the only person in the history of the State to be convicted on Repressed memory evidence. Her co-accused Pablo McCabe was a homeless schizophrenic man.In relation to one of the two rape allegations, the Defence showed that McCabe could not possibly have been there on the date in question. The jury acquitted McCabe on that count, and convicted him and Wall on the second rape charge. On 1st December 2005, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Ireland certified that Wall had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. McCabe had died in December 2002.

The events took place following the airing of the documentary, States of Fear. A 2005 Irish Times editorial suggested that the programme influenced jury members and may have played a role in the miscarriage of justice against Nora Wall.[2] ....................